Movie of the Week Returns: Eighth Grade

A movie that is a lot of different things to a lot of different people; to me, it is simply the best film of the year.

Few writers and even fewer films have properly addressed the effects that the internet and, more specifically, social media have had on American culture since their maturation in the mid-2000’s. This may sound like a more critical statement than it is meant to be; writing and thinking about the internet and how we respond to it is an incredibly difficult task (I’m about to attempt it at the most surface level right now and will almost certainly come off as an idiot). Tastes and dynamics and relationships between man and app seem to shift drastically every other week. I’m not too young to remember a time when Facebook was the social media site for me and everyone I knew, but now it’s regarded with disdain by everyone younger than 30 as “the parents’ site.”

Facebook gave way to Twitter, which gave way to Snapchat, which gave way to Instagram (so, Facebook again I guess?), which will give way to RetinaShare, an app that allows you to see a live feed from your friends’ own eyeballs and keep up with what they’re doing 24/7! Every time, the turnover period becomes shorter.

All of this is to say that it’s a really tough and really strange task to thoughtfully critique the internet. Bo Burnham, in his first attempt at writing and directing a feature film, succeeded in this task and so much more with Eighth Grade.

Bo Burnham got his start in show business in an unorthodox and, at the time, unheard of way: he was a YouTube star. Burnham’s uploads were among the first of a new breed of “Viral Videos” that gained him intense popularity with teenagers and skepticism from older people who had come up in the pre-internet entertainment industry. Today, every kid under the age of twenty has a favorite YouTuber; in 2006, nobody really knew what YouTube was or could be, including the sixteen year old Burnham.

Bo was able to make the rare leap from YouTube sensation to successful stand up comic, his act an unorthodox combination of original songs, unpredictable jokes, and thoughtful ruminations on the nature of fame and life in the internet age. He retained the support of his younger fans from his YouTube days and also garnered critical acclaim.

From there, it was inevitable that he would make the transition to auteur, both because that’s just what comics do these days and also because performing live was taking its toll on Burnham in the form of extreme anxiety (understandable: the thought of having to go out on stage and do his act in front of thousands of people is making my palms sweaty at this very moment).

So, that’s how we got Eighth Grade, a film that follows thirteen year-old Kayla Day through her turbulent final week of middle school. It is a film that is about a lot of different things (growing up, anxiety, parenting, self-discovery), but it’s all against the backdrop of Something is drastically different now than in the days of John Hughes. It’s no wonder that the definitive film about coming of age in the era of the internet was made by someone who did precisely that in front of an audience of millions.

We are introduced to Kayla (Elsie Fisher) in the cold open of the film; she is shooting a self-help video for her YouTube channel in front of the webcam of her MacBook, a makeshift studio set up in the corner of her bedroom behind her. She’s unpolished, as most thirteen year olds are, and talks about how people assume she’s quiet and shy, when in reality she considers herself to be the exact opposite––it’s just that no one has bothered to get to know her enough to see that side of her. At one point she politely asks her “audience” to share her videos with friends, as she hasn’t been getting many views (we briefly see later that she doesn’t have any more than one or two views on any single video of hers).

This opening scene serves as the mission statement for the next ninety minutes of the film. We follow Kayla as she wanders through the halls of her school between classes, begrudgingly attends a pool party where she doesn’t really know anyone, bickers with her single father Mark (Josh Hamilton), goes to the local high school for a shadow day, and just generally does eighth grade stuff, oftentimes by herself. The glue that binds all of these events and fills in the gaps between them is the time she spends on her phone and making her videos. Where she is shy and suffers from social anxiety in her real life interactions with her peers, she is confident and outgoing in her YouTube videos and on Instagram.

Burnham approaches this dichotomy delicately though, in a way that few people older than him could have done. Rather than look down at Kayla as a member of the “social media generation” of kids who are wholly self-absorbed and can only function in online settings (as is the first reflex of many older people), we see the other side of the story: a young girl burdened with having to grow up in front of a constant audience. Kayla not only has the expectation of being cool and popular and pretty in real life like every other generation of teenage girl before her, but she also has to be those things every moment of every day online as well. Making the effort to see Kayla in this light rather than in the dismissive way teenagers are seen in other films this century is the added ingredient that makes Eighth Grade unlike any other coming of age movie.

What ultimately makes Eighth Grade so good is its ability to perfectly mix the universal experience of being thirteen years old with the fleeting experience of being a young person now. At one point, a teacher dabs (as in, the dance move). This is not only hilarious to watch, for obvious reasons, but it’s a perfect example of this balance that Burnham strikes with this movie. Everyone remembers being thirteen and the old people trying (and mostly failing) to act cool by “keeping up with the current fads,” but also the dab specifically holds a very special place in the heart of anyone who was a teenager at any point this decade. The fact that the dab has mostly been dead and only used ironically since roughly 2016 only makes this instance of it even more perfect––of course the teacher would be two years behind the trend. In 2020, maybe he’ll do the floss.

There are other, more profound instances of this, of course. Josh Hamilton’s portrayal of Kayla’s father is among the best of the year, and will be a favorite of anyone who’s been a parent of a teenager and just wanted nothing more than to see them be happy, wanting to tear that happiness out of yourself and give it to them, but knowing you can’t do that and that you just have to let them figure it out on their own. That feeling is universal. Competing against a cell phone for your daughter’s attention, however, is brand new. These estuaries between the universal and the contemporary are what any self-respecting screenwriter aspires to, and they put Eighth Grade at or near the top of the list of best films of the year.

Ultimately, Eighth Grade is just a perfect storm of factors that broil together to make a great film. It is entirely relateable for anyone that was ever young, but incredibly specific to those who are young in 2018. It is at times hilarious and at times heartbreakingly sad (sometimes simultaneously). It is not afraid to mine the depths of despair that many shy and anxious kids can sink to during their formative years, but it ends on a note of hope (perhaps the most radical creative choice in the entire film and my personal favorite). The score is beautiful. Elsie Fisher is incredible. All of the pieces came together on this one, as must happen for every great film, to make something special.

As the saying goes, growing up can be tough. Kids can be mean. Especially eighth graders (just ask John Mulaney). Eighth Grade is not the first film to examine the trials and tribulations of youth, nor is it the best, but it is the first film to successfully paint the true portrait of the 21st century young adult. Not the dead-eyed and constantly sighing mannequin that can’t take their eyes off of their phone (that’s more like a doodle on a bar napkin). Instead, it shows us the thoughtful, emotional, passionate, young person who isn’t self-absorbed but who is made to feel as though if they aren’t projecting their life to the world, then they are failing in some profound way. In a culture where kids feel like they must be seen constantly, no one has ever really tried to see them before; hopefully more films like Eighth Grade come along and force us to pay better attention.

Should you see it?

I am a Bo Burnham fan!–– Cool! You should definitely see it! Although be warned, this is pretty different than a lot of his standup. Then again, just about everything is different than a lot of his standup.

I think kidz r dum–– Hm. Not a fan of Stranger Things? That’s fine, season two was a little bit of a disappointment, I agree. If you really have a deep disdain for all things millenial and/or gen Z, you’re probably not gonna love this movie. I encourage you to go anyway and let this movie try to change your mind.

Who is this Elsie Fisher?–– Glad you asked. She’s pretty startlingly great in this movie as Kayla. She’s got more range at 14 than most actors have their whole careers–I was mostly impressed with how great she was in the more comedic moments. Her face after finding out she won a not-so-desirable superlative and her reactions during a particular infamous scene involving a banana are both examples of top-tier comedic stuff.

I am a fan of Enya–– Who isn’t? See this movie. Just trust me.

Oscys??–– Uhh… yeah, sure, turn of the century paperboy, I think this movie could easily be nominated for many Oscys (namely: Burnham, Fisher, and Hamilton). But I mean, Black Mass, and also the Academy doesn’t always reward the most deserving movies. Proud to have just written my most naive sentence in my 21 years on Earth.

Next Week: Who knows. Maybe there won’t be a next week. We’re always careening on the precipice of bankruptcy here at Movie of the Week. People don’t talk about it often, but it’s tough to keep a business with zero employees and no way to monetize anything in any way afloat. That said, maybe Blackkklansman. Either way, I’d like to start doing these with a little more frequency after the summer blockbuster season starts to fade into fall.